


Night Shadow

by bizzylizzy



Series: Wind Over Tide Universe [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 19:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3300392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bizzylizzy/pseuds/bizzylizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sasuke has a secret. He has two shadows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place not too long after the Uchiha massacre.

Uchiha Sasuke has a secret.

That secret if this: he is not the one who set up shrines in the empty houses of the Uchiha district, one for each member of his family. He is not the one who lights incense every night for the dead. It is not him.

It is a shadow.

Every night, the shadow comes through the compound. It lights incense, leaves little offerings of unripened fruit. It is only a hush of moving air and a vague shape in the night, but Sasuke watches it. He watches if through a crack in the doors, the open door, and then he stands in the room and waits for the shadow to come. This time, when it does, it stays a while.

Uchiha Sasuke has a secret.

The secret is this: He is not the only Uchiha Itachi failed to kill. There is another, quicker than light who sets up the shrines and cares for them for three months. There is another, who rolls Sasuke out off his sheets when he’s sweated through them and crying out in the night. There is another Uchiha who ghosts around the compound, and Sasuke tells no one.

If Itachi knows, he will come and make this shadow a ghost.

Uchiha Sasuke has two shadows.

One follows him in the day, and one follows him at night. The nightly shadow is rarely seen, just darkness and suggestions. He is a force, not a thing, but Sasuke relishes this unseen presence. It feels like strength, like someone is there instead of just the open spaces of the compound. It awakens something fierce in his chest.

Out there in the darkness is someone like him, someone stuck to skulking in shadows and hiding for his own safety. Someone who is not strong enough to go out into the daylight and face the world as it is.

Uchiha Sasuke has a friend.

He has no idea what its name is, or gender, or anything, but it sits by him some nights. Sasuke doesn’t try to look, he just listens to the breathing presence beside him. He just listens and waits. One night it speaks to him, in a broken, quick way that is almost impossible to understand. It tells him the story of a woman running for her life to save the child in her stomach. It is a fanciful tale, but it holds Sasuke’s imagination, and he dreams of raging seas and salty shores instead of his family’s murder for the first time in weeks. The shadow tells him “sleep” and he does.

One day, the shadow vanishes.

It does not come at night. It does not whisper in the halls. It does not tell him to sleep deeply and not dream. It doesn’t leave out ripe fruit in the morning for him on the table. It does not care for the shrines or stand just out of sight anymore. It never wakes him up from nightmares, or calls to him from the darkened trees like an owl. It never laughs again in the silent halls.

Uchiha Sasuke is alone again.

His shadow is another thing his brother has taken from him.


End file.
